It looks like my last post was fairly fruitful; 40k skirmish fever has taken hold at the club and some of us will be rolling on with an Ash Wastes Necromunda campaign later this year. I've started roughly tacking some things together whilst I figure out an aesthetic for my gang. Here's a sneak peak of some rough ideas:

Ask ye not for who they seeke.

Welcome to The Tears of Isstvan.

This blog is primarily a record of my slow progress in miniature painting and modelling, and has a bias towards the settings, imagery and output of the English wargaming company, Games Workshop, and within that will largely focus on the dystopian gothic-grotesque Warhammer 40,000 setting.

Alongside a showcase of my creative processes and the resultant miniatures that make up my Inquisitorial conclaves, 40k and Fantasy armies, I intend to engage critically with the miniatures, the settings, and the current state of miniature painting, and for the blog to become a focal point of measured discussion on some of the broader aspects of the gaming and painting culture.

I perceive an emergent 'golden age' in miniature painting and a marked shift in the consideration of where to now take this hobby given the level of technical mastery that's been achieved by certain painters - a mastery that has long been espoused as the ideal, and an ideal that needs critiquing. Alongside this, I also perceive that there are certain painters that innately understand the 40k setting, and that it is these people that are spear-heading this level of critique as they seek to remove the disconnect between the presentation of the setting and it's representation in miniature form.

I make no apologies, however, for my adoration of GW luminary John Blanche and the 'Blanche aesthetic' as I see it, and it is this adoration that colours my understanding of the 40k setting.

Naturally, these ideas are simply my own opinions and are welcome to be questioned or challenged. I may well not be right, but hopefully it'll be interesting.